Plotting, Planning, Scheming & Dreaming [House Plans for 2018]
The problem with having several weeks off over the festive season, aside from consuming extraordinary amounts of food and alcohol, is that once the actual business of Christmas is over, one's mind has a chance to work overtime.
For me that meant my mind whirred onto a dangerous path of what I could start working on next in the house.
I also took stock of what I like and dislike about where the house is right now, and what I’d like to change. And if you're a regular reader, you'll know that means that no room is safe.
This post is as much about me getting the jumble of ideas out of my head, as it is about telling you what I might be getting up to this year. Do excuse me for indulging myself, and let's see how far I get...
This is very high on the list for this year, and I may just have some exciting news about a collaboration on this most important of rooms very soon.
As soon as I can I’ll be sharing several mood boards with you as I attempt to sift through all the different bathroom looks I love, to find the perfect design for us. I’m going to have to do a lot of design soul searching to make sure I do something I really love in here, and that I’ll continue to love for years to come. That said, boring / safe is not an option! It’s a small room, so not really much / any scope to change the layout, but massive improvements are needed, and I intend to have fun with this design!
Sorry, but this is as much of the bathroom that I’m prepared to show you at this stage.
For me that meant my mind whirred onto a dangerous path of what I could start working on next in the house.
I also took stock of what I like and dislike about where the house is right now, and what I’d like to change. And if you're a regular reader, you'll know that means that no room is safe.
This post is as much about me getting the jumble of ideas out of my head, as it is about telling you what I might be getting up to this year. Do excuse me for indulging myself, and let's see how far I get...
The Bathrooms
This is very high on the list for this year, and I may just have some exciting news about a collaboration on this most important of rooms very soon.
As soon as I can I’ll be sharing several mood boards with you as I attempt to sift through all the different bathroom looks I love, to find the perfect design for us. I’m going to have to do a lot of design soul searching to make sure I do something I really love in here, and that I’ll continue to love for years to come. That said, boring / safe is not an option! It’s a small room, so not really much / any scope to change the layout, but massive improvements are needed, and I intend to have fun with this design!
Sorry, but this is as much of the bathroom that I’m prepared to show you at this stage.
The loft bathroom is actually totally fine, lovely even, except for the fact that there's a mystery leak coming from the shower that we can't seem to locate, and now we're just ignoring it. This needs to be sorted before work begins on the main bathroom.
Living Room
Everyone loves the living room, and so do I, BUT I really want to go more luxe and less boho in here this year, and I have a few ideas. A few hundred that is.
I would absolutely love to get rid of the white floorboards. They’re beyond restoration, and need to be replaced. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until they're gone, but they're gappy and therefore the rooms are difficult to heat, and so hard to keep looking good. They took a real battering last year when we did the kitchen, and I just don't want to put the effort in of refinishing them AGAIN. I don’t know if it will be feasible financially, but I’d love to put parquet in there, the dining room and hallway. That would obviously set the tone for the new look, and other plans may include a colour change, Grasscloth, mirrors and some gloss in unexpected places.
The arm of the sofa has caved in (not visibly, but it’s basically now hollow under the fabric) so that will need to be replaced, and I’d also like to replace the coffee table with something more modern, less vintage. The pink chair desperately needs reupholstering, so basically a whole new look is afoot for this room, and I’m excited!
The kids rooms are pretty much done so are actually safe for now, and our room is getting there, but I still need to get the velvet curtains up on on a ceiling track and I’d quite like to replace the vintage drawers with something new. I have fantasies about wall lights either side of the drawers too, but the cost of an electrician to make that happen, and then the knock on effect of filling and redecorating all sounds like more effort than I'm prepared to give right now, so I might have to shelve that fantasy. For a bit.
TV room, doesn’t ‘need’ anything doing to it, but that doesn’t mean nothing will change! A part of me keeps wondering what the brown sofa from here would look like in the living room, and I'm generally in a bit of a conundrum about the sofa situation. An actual sofa bed would be much better (instead of the current reality of a modular sofa that needs to be re-jigged to use as a bed, and also requires a mattress topper to be dragged in from another room!), but it's a long, shallow room divided almost in half by the door, no sofa beds fill the space as I'd like them to. I clearly need to have more of a think about this room and it's use...
The other thing that’s still lacking in this room, and in fact throughout the house, is a music system, and I’d always intended to have a turntable in this room and to bring the vinyl up from the cellar, so I’d love to sort that out soon too.
I would absolutely love to get rid of the white floorboards. They’re beyond restoration, and need to be replaced. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it until they're gone, but they're gappy and therefore the rooms are difficult to heat, and so hard to keep looking good. They took a real battering last year when we did the kitchen, and I just don't want to put the effort in of refinishing them AGAIN. I don’t know if it will be feasible financially, but I’d love to put parquet in there, the dining room and hallway. That would obviously set the tone for the new look, and other plans may include a colour change, Grasscloth, mirrors and some gloss in unexpected places.
The arm of the sofa has caved in (not visibly, but it’s basically now hollow under the fabric) so that will need to be replaced, and I’d also like to replace the coffee table with something more modern, less vintage. The pink chair desperately needs reupholstering, so basically a whole new look is afoot for this room, and I’m excited!
I'm going to start working on this room slowly, regardless of the floor situation, which will happen eventually, but perhaps not as soon as I'd like.
Dining Room
This room isn’t working AT ALL. I’d like to up the luxe-factor in here too with different dining chairs, possibly changing the colour of the sideboard, and continuing whatever wall colour or treatment I put in the living room.
An extra shallow console would be useful in here, the current trolley is not right at all, and is too deep for the space, so will be going.
I might even move some of the art and replace it with a big round mirror. I need to put some more thought into this room which frustratingly seems to repeatedly turn into a storage room / thoroughfare more than dining room.
An extra shallow console would be useful in here, the current trolley is not right at all, and is too deep for the space, so will be going.
I might even move some of the art and replace it with a big round mirror. I need to put some more thought into this room which frustratingly seems to repeatedly turn into a storage room / thoroughfare more than dining room.
Bedrooms
The kids rooms are pretty much done so are actually safe for now, and our room is getting there, but I still need to get the velvet curtains up on on a ceiling track and I’d quite like to replace the vintage drawers with something new. I have fantasies about wall lights either side of the drawers too, but the cost of an electrician to make that happen, and then the knock on effect of filling and redecorating all sounds like more effort than I'm prepared to give right now, so I might have to shelve that fantasy. For a bit.
I think the Florence Broadhurst sofa will be relocated to keep it really calm and spacious in here.
TV Room
From a practical perspective, we're still lacking in storage in here, so I may add a row of wall units above the existing cupboards.
The other thing that’s still lacking in this room, and in fact throughout the house, is a music system, and I’d always intended to have a turntable in this room and to bring the vinyl up from the cellar, so I’d love to sort that out soon too.
Although I still love the teal, I'm quite tempted so see what a murky paler sea-green would look like, and if there's one thing I've learnt about myself, it's that once the seed is planted, it's pretty much going to happen at some point.
Guest Room / Studio
I know, I know, even I can't keep up with what's happening here.
The guest room, that was my little Studio (that was previously the guest room!) until I decided on a whim to take my desk out onto the landing, and shove Edie’s old bed in there, is quite frankly a disaster. I’m not even going to show you it’s that bad. I need to do some serious culling of stuff, and decide if it’s going to remain a guest room, or switch back again to my studio.
The guest room, that was my little Studio (that was previously the guest room!) until I decided on a whim to take my desk out onto the landing, and shove Edie’s old bed in there, is quite frankly a disaster. I’m not even going to show you it’s that bad. I need to do some serious culling of stuff, and decide if it’s going to remain a guest room, or switch back again to my studio.
The reason that this has changed and changed again is part due to the TV Room sofa conundrum (see above), and partly because I've come to the realisation that don't really like working upstairs, so do I actually need a dedicated space at all? I'm really starting to doubt that I do, and we do have guests stay quite regularly, so my gut says this room would be put to better use as guest / storage room, but done in a much smarter and nicer way than it currently is. Then the TV sofa bed issue would go away. And no, you can't see it. Not until I'm about to tackle it anyway.
The Kitchen
If you're a regular here, you'll know we completely re-fitted the kitchen back in September last year, so this room is also safe. For now. You can see the finished room here and a few little updates here if you haven't seen it already.
PHEW. So there you go. That's the inside of my head where the house is concerned. There’s a LOT. Don’t tell my husband okay?
PHEW. So there you go. That's the inside of my head where the house is concerned. There’s a LOT. Don’t tell my husband okay?